7 Common Mistakes to Avoid when Creating a Website

You’re ready to launch your website but you don’t want to take chances so you begin to ask around, is there anything like common mistakes to avoid when creating a website?

Well, your guess is right. There’s a bucket full of mistakes to avoid when building a website.

And it doesn’t matter whether you’re building a small Real Estate Website, Corporate Website for your firm or even an eCommerce website. You have to void these mistakes by all means.

While a few of these mistakes are sometimes pardonable, some of them are so serious that they will ruin your website if you ever get to make them.

But, you have nothing to worry about because in the following paragraphs, I’ll be sharing with you a list of these mistakes and what you can do to avoid them so you don’t get your website all messed up.

Using the Wrong Domain Name

One of the most common mistakes to avoid when creating a website is to avoid choosing the wrong domain name.

A lot of people fall into this mistake without realizing it. And oftentimes the consequences of using the wrong domain name is always very serious.

Now, in case you’re wondering what a domain name is all about, your domain name is the name of you call your website.

It’s your web address. Or simply put, the URL that is usually typed into the browser, whenever a user wants to access your website.

Naturally, if you’re a business or an entity with a distinct brand, your domain name should reflect your brand name.

Let me give you an example. Supposing you have a business with the name ABC Digital Services; the domain name you should use is abcdigitalservices.com

But most people make the mistake of choosing a domain name that’s entirely different from their business name/offline brand.

Doing this is not good for your brand…

Because if you’re already well known offline or on the social media with a particular brand, Its normal, people looking for you online will search with the brand name already associated with you.

So its common sense to stick with your brand name while coming up with a name for your website.

In fact, from your website to your social media handle, everything about your brand should have a uniform brand name for easy recognition.

Now, there are cases where your preferred domain name would have been registered or taken by another entity.

In such case, the best thing to do is to choose an alternative name that’s still close to or still represents your brand.

A good web designer should help you do that or If you’re designing your website by yourself, you can play around with names until you get the one that fits in.

Be sure the name you finally settle for is so close to your offline brand name that people won’t get confused with it.

Incorrect Domain Extensions

Another common mistake to avoid when creating your website is using the wrong domain extension.

A domain extension is the combination of characters following the period in a web address. Alternatively, a domain extension can also be seen as the ending part of your web address. It can end with a .com, .net, .co.uk, .ng, etc.

The default and most popular domain extension is the .com.

This is why you have domain extensions like victorwnners.com more often than say victorwinners.net or others.

In fact, by default, the average non techie internet user thinks every domain name has to end with a .com etc. But this is not true.

For you, as a potential website owner, you need to understand the domain name extension that will work for you before setting up your website.

This is because a dot com extension is not the best in all cases.

Like for instance, if your website is selling products targeted at an audience based in a particular country then it is best your domain extension ends with the extension for that country for SEO purposes.

So if you’re an e-commerce firm targeting delivery to clients in Nigeria for instance, it’s better you get an extension that ends with .com.ng or .ng.

Same with a website that’s set to targeting people in the UK for instance. A .uk or .co.uk would serve the audience and improve your SEO and geo-targeting much better.

There are other minor domain extensions too…

Like for instance if you’re setting up an online television website, you can use the extension .tv instead of a .com.

Or if you’re an NGO, a .org is still preferable to a .com.

In any case, a .com extension will work perfectly for a business that doesn’t lay much emphasis on a regional targeting.

To help your users remember your website URL much more easily, don’t bother using any extension other than .com unless your reason falls under instances mentioned above.

Irregular Brand Perception

Another common mistake to avoid when creating a website is setting up the wrong brand perception for your website.

So, before you even get the website up, you have to find out the kind of brand perception you want to create whenever a user visits your website.

This is very important because from your color combination to graphics presentation and arrangement etc, a user can decide whether to stay or leave, as soon as they visit your website.

Note that a website focused on men for instance is supposed to have a different ambience and looks, from one focused on women.

Same thing goes for a website pursuing a certain distinguished cause.

The color combination, graphics and UI arrangement has to reflect the brand and the message you want to pass across to your ideal user.

As a website owner, you should be able to come up with a perfect design arrangement that will pass across your messages perfectly.

Limited Hosting Plan

A hosting plan allows you to host your website on a particular web server over a certain period of time.

Most often, hosting plans come in different packages. There are plans that are billed monthly, annually, bi yearly etc.

Choosing the right hosting plan can be quite a task thus making it one of the common mistakes to avoid while creating a website.

To make sure you’re not making this mistake, work on choosing a plan that’s suitable for your business.

If you’re not tech savvy, while contracting your website to a web design agency, be sure you know how to go about renewing your domain and hosting plans on your own.

Alternatively, set up a reminder to make renewals whenever it’s time to renew your website so you don’t get your website deleted after running out of subscription.

Insufficient Disk-Space and Bandwidth

A diskspace comes with your web hosting plan. It is like a space allocated to you to save your stuff on the web.

All your uploads like photos, videos and even contents are stored on your Diskspace.

If you’re running a picture or video intensive website, you’ll need a large diskspace to save your uploads.

This is why it’s important to know what web hosting plan you’re paying for. And the kind exact disk space you’ll be allocated.

Remember, the larger the diskspace, the larger the uploads it can support. So, if you’re planning to upload a lot of videos or high resolution images then you’ll need a lot of disk space.

Another thing you want to consider is the bandwidth. A Bandwidth is the capacity of data that can be transferred between your website, its users and the servers at a single time.

Or simply put, a bandwidth allocates to you the number of visitors that can visit your website at the same, over a specific period.

Although most web hosting plans offer unlimited bandwidth, some shared hosting plans puts a limit on your bandwidth thus limiting the number of users that can visit or carry out certain activities on your website per time.

To be on the safe side, If you’re shopping for a shared hosting provider for your website then it’s best you find out the bandwidth that will be suitable for you, based on your needs.

Unreliable Web Hosting Provider

One major mistakes to avoid when creating a website is going for a web host simply because it’s very cheap.

It’s true you might be on a budget, especially if you’re a small business…

But you have to also realize that some extremely cheap web hosting are also very defective.

You need a web host that can assure you of at least 99.9 percent uptime so your website can always be available online.

You’ll also need a web host that is free from cyber attacks so your database can be in safe hands. These are the things you should look out for when choosing a web hosting provider for your website.

And for the fact that so many web hosting providers can promise so much only to deliver very little, you want to check out reviews, find out what others are saying about a web hosting provider before you make a choice.

Not having a Website Backup

Finally, this might look really significant but one website design mistakes to avoid when creating a website is creating your website without a back up on a third party platform.

You need an external back up for your website because you can’t completely rule out an attack or a mistake on the server your website is being hosted.

There are a handful of places you can get to back up your website. You can follow this guide by themeisle to back up your website here.

At victorwinners.com, we back up websites externally for all our clients while giving them access to the back up.

Be sure you request an external and periodic backup from your web designer. It will serve you the stress of having to start all over again if anything happens to your website.

Final Words

So there you have all the important mistakes to avoid while creating your website.

In as much as there are a handful of other web design mistakes you need to avoid, be sure you avoid the above listed mistakes as possible if you really want to enjoy your website.

Also, while choosing a web design agency, be sure you choose a web design agency that will create your website without making these costly mistakes.

Now it’s over to you! What is the biggest mistake you made with your website and what did it cost you? Lets read your comment.